Designing for Justice-Oriented Critical Caring in Science Teacher Education

• In Event: Revisioning Care in the Pursuit of Educational Equity

Abstract

Purpose
As we imagine a world where justice is irresistible, a re-configuration of science classrooms where caring relationships support students’ self-actualization is key. Specifically, science classrooms must build on relational ideologies of schooling characterized by critical caring (Antrop-González & de Jesús, 2006; Authors, 2023a), where teachers support students in developing as persons who care and are cared for within oppressive systems (like schooling and science). Without justice-oriented care, a stance towards valuing sensemaking (Russ, 2014) and heterogeneous thinking (Warren et al., 2020) will not be enough for dismantling unjust structures.
Here, we describe two iterations of science methods courses that aim to foster pedagogies of justice-oriented critical care in science. We argue that critical care is necessary for promoting justice and rejecting utilitarian notions of science, and we suggest design principles that center relationality and reflectivity.

Perspectives
In conceptualizing pedagogies of critical care for science, we draw on the notion of justice from intersectional feminist legal scholarship that articulates characteristics guiding decision-making that lead to human dignity, growth, and flourishing (Hudson, 2003):
• relational - account for relationships between individuals, groups, and communities;
• discursive - appraise critiques and defenses of existing values in undominated discourse;
• plurivocal - recognize the voices of multiple groups and meet their claims;
• rights regarding - defend the rights of individuals and communities;
• reflective - consider individual cases rather than subsuming unique circumstances under generalities.
In examining the embodiments of these characteristics in our courses, we asked: how do pre-service teachers (PSTs) come to know science (pedagogies) through relationality and reflectivity?

Methods & Data Sources
Following a design-based research approach (Cobb et al., 2003), we modified activities in pre-service methods courses at two universities for future elementary and middle-grades teachers in Fall 2021 and Fall 2022. These modifications aimed to attune PSTs to the relationality, and reflectivity of pedagogical and science practices. The modifications reflected two design principles: (a) pressing PSTs to attend to students’ relational bids amidst their science ideas; and (b) pressing PSTs to interpret those bids through the power dynamics of schooling. We collected copies of PST-created artifacts (surveys, interviews, lesson plans) from each course during the iterations of each course.

Results & Scholarly Significance
Analyses showed that PSTs initially focused on the behaviors of students while engaging in science investigations, like being polite towards each other. As the PSTs became more attuned to understanding students’ ideas, learned more about their placement sites and students, and grew their pedagogical skills, like learning how to “elicit students’ science ideas,” we saw an increasingly nuanced presence of relationality, and reflectivity considerations in PSTs’ assignments. For example, in considering how to support student-driven discussions that aimed to explain a natural phenomenon, PSTs across both courses reflected on how it allowed students to contribute comfortably (i.e., without policing their actions) and allowed them as instructors to see how heterogeneous knowledge contributions were being taken up (or not) and by whom. We offer these initial design principles as a means toward supporting relationally-oriented justice in science education.

Authors

• Enrique Suárez, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Christina Krist, Stanford University